A Clear Sky Just Wouldn't Feel Right
by OpalescentStorm
Summary: You can't change who you are, you can only become someone new. And all too often, things get lost in the process. Three future Narutoverse Tenten oneshots for the solitare3 community on LJ.


**FIRST: lady paramount**

She's the best in her field.

Once upon a time, when she was a Genin and wore pink and the bloodstains weren't on her fingernails, she could kill a man with twenty kunai.

It wasn't that she was weak, or that her aim was poor. She was hesitant, though, and she was conspicuous, and many times he would have time to construct a proper defense. At the least, he would dodge and only be hit superficially by her steel until one sunk deep into a crucial point. These days, though, are long gone.

She can kill an extraordinarily strong man, a genius even, with her best technique.

With her best technique and her team to distract and aid, she can kill three amazing ninja in one fell swoop.

And she can slaughter a couple of hundreds of civilians, or slightly less that number of Genin.

Her skill is great now, her artillery not just thousands of weapons, but chakra strings and explosive tags and fire, and she's long past hesitation. Reach and throw, reach and throw. A truly mechanized action. This is her, her future, painted as cleanly as the ANBU mask that almost conceals childish panda-buns.

On an all-too-relevant note, the first thousands of any country's armies are the weakest. Genin, civilians poorly prepared, and convicts. Cannon fodder.

They serve no other purpose than to be sent out to fight the other country's cannon fodder, to attempt to tire those stronger than them, and then to perish on the battlefield. Used up and exhausted like a child's once-favorite doll.

"Fated to die" is the unapologetic term that her commander uses, and she rebels mentally, seeing a cruel scar marring a forehead that is too young. "Useless," he continues, and her vision is assuaged by a blinding smile and determination as deep as any ocean.

She should be idealistic, for who is she to deny these soldiers their existence simply because they were weak at an inconvenient time? Had not she and her team, and all of the other rookies, been just as useless at one point? Somehow, though, she knows she must do what she must do. They will die, for the sins of their village and for their own sins, and though she has no right to judge or deliver death, it is her duty. At least she can assure they die swiftly.

The gloves are pulled tight onto her hands, and her mask is adjusted perfectly. And on her legs, the shin guards leave no room for an errant kunai to leave so much as a hair-thin scratch. She puts her scroll onto her back and faces forward, away from it.

At the beginning, the front lines clash and hold. From her vantage point in this tree, they're toy soldiers; they look even more so when she looks closer and sees scared, frantic, uneducated brawling. A one-two count and the signal she was given comes.

She is lady paramount here.

The knives slip through her weapons like the tears might from her eyes. A fabricated image, but a nice one to keep her company while she's so _above_ everything.

While she twists and throws and moves and even dances, she closes her eyes. She knows every move by heart, has practiced them each a thousand times in her head to get them perfect. Now, perhaps, they are too perfect.

A machine. Or, in other words, a perfect shinobi. In the space between heartbeats, she knows countless others are dying, die, will die, have died. They are unprepared, and they probably are unsure of how to construct a proper defense. Moreover, they are surprised by the attack of Konoha's troops, which ended swiftly, as it began.

She reaches for another spot of her scroll to wipe her thumb across, but it is blank, every weapon spent.

As she returns to the tree she'd been on, she refuses to glance at the genocide she's left below her. Gai-sensei had always told her to forgive herself for crimes committed, but she knows if she looks upon the weak lying there, she will never allow herself a second chance.

This is war, of course. These are the consequences, and both sides know this.

But the little girl with bright, bright brown eyes, the one who wore pink, cowers in fear in the shadow of her impressive new figure. She doesn't know about duty or consequences or fate or death tolls. She just knows she's afraid.


End file.
